Self-Image Congruity and its Impact on Wine Tourism

Abstract

Consumer decisions involve not only rational and utilitarian attributes, but also value and symbolic attributes of a product or service. Self-image congruity models are based on the notion of the cognitive matching between value expressive attributes of a given product or brand and the consumers’ self-image (Sirgy and Johar 1985). This research investigates the impact of self-image congruity on wine tourism behaviour, specifically winery/cellar door visitation, with the inclusion of functional and affective destination image constructs of wine regions, and attitude toward wine tourism. There is a lack of evidence within the tourism literature of the effect of self-congruity on the intentions or motivations to visit a destination (Chon 1992; Litvin and Goh 2002; Sirgy and Su 2000). In addition the researcher is interested in the potential differences of consumers who are considered high involved wine consumers vs those who are low involved wine consumers, and the impact on the self-image congruity model. Involvement as a construct is well established in wine purchasing behaviour (Lockshin, Jarvis, d’Hauteville and Perrouty 2006; Lockshin, Quester and Spawton 2001; Lockshin, Spawton and Macintosh 1997; Lockshin and Spawton 2001; Quester and Smart 1996; Rasmussen and Lockshin 1999; Zaichkowsky 1985). The link between wine involvement and wine tourism activity however, has only recently been explored by Brown, Havitz and Getz (2006), who developed a wine involvement scale (WIS). Similarly limited research has been conducted evaluating the effect of involvement with self-congruity. One study found the effect of involvement moderated the effect of congruity where the greater the involvement with travelling, the more important self-congruity is (Beerli et al., 2007).